A Flight Through Jupiter's Skies
by The Izzy Iz
Summary: She was a highschool girl engaged in an inter-galactic romance with a big green man. Tie-in for A Meeting by Moonlight and takes place between chapters 6 and 7. Part of the Riniverse. Makoto (Jupiter) x Piccolo.


**A/N:** Tie in with 'A Meeting by Moonlight' and set in the same universe. Occurs between Chapters 6 and 7 of that story.

* * *

Makoto sat in her computer with a little green plush pillow in her lap, eyes cast down to gaze at the hard orange sphere that was resting upon it. The item was a littler smaller than a soccer ball and shimmered as the light reflected across it. Inside, seven sharp, bright crimson stars arrayed themselves in a rough circle.

With a sigh she placed her palm flat across the sphere, rubbed it once then closed her eyes. When she was alone, when he was gone, she liked to hold this thing in her hands, this 'Dragon Ball', as he's called it. It reminded her of their connection.

Makoto's eyes opened and she almost laughed when she thought about it, about their relationship. It had seemed at one tone absurd to her, a thing of fiction and make believe, an impossibility within this normal world that she had known and grown up in. Yet, it was all too real.

Makoto's beliefs about the world she knew had been challenged many times since then. It was hard for a high-school girl to take it all in: she was a Pretty Soldier, a warrior from the distant past of the Silver Millennium cast forward in time more than a thousand years. She was a protector of Earth and the new Kingdom of the Moon, would live on far past anyone else she'd ever known or cared about; it had been hard for the young girl to accept.

She was strong though and had grown as she'd accepted the truth, accepted many other things that just a year ago she would have thought laughable. There were aliens from other worlds and dimensions out there in space and even some that lived here on Earth.

She was a highschool girl engaged in an inter-galactic romance with a big green man.

She did giggle then, had to lift her hand to stifle her own laughter as she set the Dragon Ball and its cushion away. She tried to imagine how he would've responded to her saying that? When they'd first met he'd been gruff and aloof, barely ever speaking except to tell her to go away and stop interrupting his meditation. Over time though, he'd softened, opened himself up to see parts of him she'd never expected him to have.

She'd even seen him genuinely laugh. Well, once at least.

Rising from her chair the young girl made her way across the room, flopped back onto her bed as she pulled the band from her brown hair letting her flowing locks cascade out across the white sheets as she gazed up towards the slowly turning ceiling fan above.

"Piccolo."

She said aloud and turned the name over on her tongue. It was a musical instrument she knew, hardly a proper name for an inter-galactic warrior. It had been a long time of pestering him before he'd finally revealed everything. Had told her about his father and the wicked things he'd done, told her the evil that he himself had inflicted and the ways he'd grown and atoned. One moment in particular stood out in her mind though: the first time he'd taken her to the lookout.

Makoto could recall the feeling of her arms wrapped tightly around his rough green skin, the way she's buried her face in his shoulder and refused to look down. She was a strong girl and confident, nothing scared her! Well, nothing other than that.

Ever since her parents had died she'd avoided planes, flight, and heights in general, the only chink in her otherwise self-confident armor. He'd helped her overcome it, had held her in his arms as they alighted from the ground so easily, had floated up into the sky as the landscape shrank beneath them.

At first she'd been terrified! Those emotions and memories swelled her in heart like a burning fire, an inferno that threatened to consume the peaceful forest of her mental serenity. It was only in his guidance and their multiple flights together that she'd learned to cope, learned to overcome her fear.

Standing on the edge of Kami's lookout had been breathtaking.

The world seemed to stretch forever as the rolling landscape disappeared over the curve of the horizon. Up so high the air was crisp and clear and she'd even tested herself! Sat on the edge and let her feet dangle over as she kicked them back and forth, much to his amusement.

While they were there she'd met a great number of new friends that constantly surprised her. A talking cat! Well, another talking cat. . . but this one could walk! And a grouchy, lazy samurai that seemed as though he might have been out of one of those old black-and-white movies she'd seen growing up.

She'd even met another like him, though this one was hardly more than a boy. Dende, he'd told her his name was. A protector of Earth just like herself and it's permanent guardian.

Makoto had followed Piccolo and Dende into that inner sanctum, almost like a temple where that sphere had sat the first time she'd seen it. Dende had picked it up and presented it respectfully to Piccolo and he in turn had given it to her.

It was trust, she'd realized then. A sign that he trusted her completely.

Makoto flopped over onto her side and gazed again at that sphere from across the room. Watched it and contemplated what it meant. He'd given her something of himself with it; his heritage, his past, and all of his future had been bound up in that single thing he'd given her.

"A Dragon Ball."

Makoto clutched her pillow tight and shook her head, forced back her emotions to maintain that calm exterior. 'I won't cry, I won't cry, I won't. . .' It didn't help, the tears came again. Why did she always have to be such a romantic?

He was away now, gone to some distant planet to train with someone called a Kai? She hated the fact that he'd left her, left her with nothing but that big, stupid, hard, enchanting, wondrous ball as the only thing to remember him by. He'd be back she knew but the waiting was difficult enough. She had her own trials in her school work and fighting back the forces of evil; she needed that rock to lean on so that she could keep herself strong.

Just then she heard her window click open and her head shot up, eyes opened as she wiped the tears from her eyes. He was standing there with the window behind him, arms folded across his chest.

"Crying again?" He asked sternly, and she shook her head, leaped from the bed to throw her arms around him as the alien warrior took a single step back. It was hard to hug him around that Namekian armor but she managed just fine.

"You really know how to keep a girl waiting." She said with a laugh and the male only grunted uncomfortably. He was never going to be the sappy emotional type, she knew, and that was okay, she knew how he felt on the inside. Slowly Piccolo's arms wrapped around the girl in return and he forced himself to show her the physical affection he knew she needed.

"I'm glad you're home, my Big Green Man."


End file.
